Hitting Where It Hurts

Jurors deliberated more than 10 hours in Angleton, Texas, before awarding $24.4 million in actual damages and $229 million in punitive damages to the family of Robert Ernst. Shares of Merck, the third-largest U.S. drugmaker, fell to a six-month low, erasing $5.2 billion from the company's market value.

$229 million in punitive? As my girlfriend noted, this was a white male jury in Texas, for them to side so harshly against the company means bad things a-brewing for the drug industry. The damages aware were almost unquestionably excessive which makes them seem more like an expression of anger at Big Pharma (and maybe Big Business in general, particularly post-Enron) than anything else. And while it'll be reduced on appeal, if the environment has shifted in such a way that juries simply want to stick it to corporations, the slew of suits in the offing will give them plenty of chances to do so.